Today is the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere. Christmas is just a few days away. So what is our “find” for the day? Seeds! Flowers! All things spring! It is the only way we are going to make it through the long cold days ahead.

We are intrigued by heirloom and antique seeds. We love the idea of people trying to preserve the heritage of our agricultural past. So we were very happy to find Select Seeds – “heirloom treasures for modern gardens.”

Select Seeds is a great site. You can learn about antique flowers: “Antique flowers are open-pollinated varieties that originated fifty or more years ago. Open-pollinated flowers are fertilized by insects, hummingbirds or wind, and the resulting seeds will produce plants that are identical or very similar to the parent plant.”

The site has a ton of information and you can purchase seeds as well. I’ve learned a lot from poking around Select Seeds’ website.

Meanwhile, we also discovered the Seed Savers Exchange. “Since 1975, Seed Savers Exchange members have passed on approximately one million samples of rare garden seeds to other gardeners. We are a non-profit organization of gardeners dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.”

We love these guys. Again, the idea of preserving heirloom seeds is something worth supporting.

So today is the first day of winter, the shortest day of the year. Look at it this way: the days start getting longer now. Spring is just around the corner.